Tuesday, June 23, 2015

Rant: Doom's Love of the The Beatles

Can we just stop and talk about this panel from Loki Agent of Asgard #7 for a moment, please? In this issue published last October, Victor Von Doom gets Loki sentenced to death, and in the course of the story, we get a brief glimpse of Doom's secret inner lair.

Are there wracks and chains? Laboratory equipment? Giant banks of Batcave-style computers? Nope. First thing we see a row of old school Jukeboxes that apparently play a custom cover of "All you Need is Love" into which Doom's own name has been inserted.

There's a whole world of backstory in this panel, and it will haunt me forever.

Did Doom just one day decide there needed to be an evil version
of "All you need is love?" Did he pervert one of the most famous songs of all time as an act of defiance? Or maybe humor? Was he just too embarrassed to listen to his Beatles song while plot global mayhem? Is he worried that if someone caught him jamming to a song about love he'd get loose all supervillain cred but incappable of letting go of this small remnant of his former life? Or maybe that jukebox is a gift from an overzealous
fan.

I don't know, and it's killing me. I feel like this could be Doom's "Heart of Ice" moment - that little nugget of backstory that transforms him into a three-dimensional character.